In desperation I changed the permissions on /var/dcindx with a chmod o+x so that it is now: drwx--S--x which quieted that avalanche of error message. Still, what *should* the permissions and ownership be?

I'm also seeing these messages, which I've discovered were happening before I did the migration:

Nov 5 09:36:06 mercury mail:err|error dovecot: IMAP(ahinds): mkdir(/var/dcindx/ahinds/.imap/Apple M ail To Do) failed: Permission denied Nov 5 09:37:06 mercury mail:err|error dovecot: IMAP(ahinds): mkdir(/var/dcindx/ahinds/.imap/Drafts) failed: Permission denied

ahinds is a valid user. There is no ahinds directory (as there should be) under /var/dcindx

Stewart Dean wrote:

After V1.2 had been up for a while, I started seeing tons of syslog error messages like this:

Nov 5 09:11:52 mercury mail:err|error dovecot: IMAP(sdean): stat(/var/dcindx/sdean/.imap/DadEstate) failed: Permission denied (euid=202(sdean) egid=200(hcrc) missing +x perm: /var/dcindx)

Ownernship and Permissions are: The index filesystem 2726 root@mercury:/var/dcindx ## ls -ald drwx--S--- 3946 dovecot
system 192512 Nov 05 08:59 ./

A user's directory is:

2729 root@mercury:/var/dcindx ## ls -al sdean

total 400 drwx--S--- 7 sdean sys 256 Sep 29 04:43 ./ drwx--S--- 3946 dovecot system 192512 Nov 05 08:59 ../ drwx--S--- 139 sdean sys 8192 Sep 29 04:43 .imap/

and for the directory with the problem:

2731 root@mercury:/var/dcindx ## ls -al sdean/.imap/DadEstate total 48 drwx--S--- 2 sdean sys 256 Sep 29 04:43 ./ drwx--S--- 139 sdean sys 8192 Sep 29 04:43 ../ -rw------- 1 sdean sys 408 Jan 14 2009 dovecot.index -rw------- 1 sdean sys 18432 May 05 2009
dovecot.index.cache -rw------- 1 sdean sys 828 Jan 14 2009
dovecot.index.log

I switched back to V1.1, but the situation persists

dovecot -n:

# 1.1.15: /usr/local/etc/dovecot.conf # OS: AIX 3 0001378F4C00 listen: *:143 ssl_listen: *:993 disable_plaintext_auth: no verbose_ssl: yes login_dir: /var/run/dovecot/login login_executable: /usr/local/libexec/dovecot/imap-login login_processes_count: 12 login_max_processes_count: 774 max_mail_processes: 1024 verbose_proctitle: yes first_valid_uid: 200 mail_location: mbox:~/mail:INBOX=/var/spool/mail/%u:INDEX=/var/dcindx/%u mbox_write_locks: fcntl mbox_dirty_syncs: no auth default: passdb: driver: pam userdb: driver: passwd

-- ==== Once upon a time, the Internet was a friendly, neighbors-helping-neighbors small town, and no one locked their doors. Now it's like an apartment in Bed-Stuy: you need three heavy duty pick-proof locks, one of those braces that goes from the lock to the floor, and bars on the windows.... ==== Stewart Dean, Unix System Admin, Bard College, New York 12504 sdean@bard.edu voice: 845-758-7475, fax: 845-758-7035

Steffan's answer was good. Also:

On Thu, 2009-11-05 at 09:24 -0500, Stewart Dean wrote:

2726 root@mercury:/var/dcindx ## ls -ald
drwx--S--- 3946 dovecot system 192512 Nov 05 08:59 ./

Don't use "dovecot" user for ANYTHING. It's used internally by login processes. There should be no files in filesystem owned by dovecot user.